---
title:  Distributed System Members
---

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Distributed system members are programs that connect to a Geode distributed system. You configure members to belong to a single distributed system, and you can optionally configure them to be clients or servers to members in other distributed systems, and to communicate with other distributed systems.

## <a id="distributed_system_member_configuration__section_326B2609B67E4FBE9BF2074C3B211E50" class="no-quick-link"></a>Member Overview

Distributed system members (or simply "members") connect to the Geode system when they create the Geode data cache. The members' distributed system is configured through Geode properties. See [gemfire.properties and gfsecurity.properties (Geode Properties)](../../reference/topics/gemfire_properties.html). Geode properties specify all necessary information for system member startup, initialization, and communication.

**Note:**
You cannot change a member's properties while the member is connected to the distributed system.

Use the properties to define:

-   How to find and communicate with other system members
-   How to perform logging and statistics activities
-   Which persistent configuration or `cache.xml` file to use for cache and data region initialization
-   Other options, including event conflation, how to handle network loss, and security settings

## <a id="distributed_system_member_configuration__section_E755E9E4A31149C980561D617A99A002" class="no-quick-link"></a>Distributed System Membership and System Topologies

Every Geode process is a member of a distributed system, even if the distributed system is defined as standalone, with just one member. You can run an individual distributed system in isolation or you can combine systems for vertical and horizontal scaling. See [Topology and Communication General Concepts](../../topologies_and_comm/topology_concepts/chapter_overview.html).

-   **Peer-to-Peer Distributed Systems**. Members that define the same member discovery properties belong to the same distributed system and are peers to one another.
-   **Client/Server Installations**. The client/server topology uses relationships that you configure between members of multiple distributed systems. You configure some or all of the peers in one distributed system to act as cache servers to clients connecting from outside the system. Each server can host many client processes, managing cache access for all in an efficient, vertically hierarchical cache configuration. You configure the client applications to connect to the servers, using a client cache configuration. Clients run as members of standalone Geode distributed systems, with no peers, so all data updates and requests go to the servers.

## **Multi-site Installations**

The multi-site topology uses relationships that you configure between members of multiple distributed systems. Through this configuration, you loosely couple two or more distributed systems for automated data distribution. This is usually done for sites at geographically separate locations. You configure a subset of peers in each distributed system site with gateway senders and/or gateway receivers to manage events that are distributed between the sites.

In the context of a single distributed system, unless otherwise specified, remote members refers to other members of the same distributed system. In client/server and multi-site installations, remote generally refers to members in other distributed systems. For example, all servers are remote to the clients that connect to them. Each client runs standalone, with connections only to the server tier, so all servers and their other clients are remote to the individual client. All gateway receivers are remote to the gateway senders that connect to them from other distributed systems,and to those gateway senders’ peers.


